Can it be true? Are there still people out there who still support George Bush and his administration? What do they need to see the light? A conversion experience? The Face of God?

So be it. Humans have seen the divine in the night sky from the earliest times. Humans have looked to the stars to discover their destinies. Even, George Bush is reaching for the heavens in the midst of the most colossally astronomically costly war ever; he wants to put a man on Mars. What is he looking for there? Peace? Clean air?

Let’s look at the stars, too. Let’s turn out our lights and reveal just who is in the majority. It’s been all too easy for the pollsters, pundits, politicians and the pharisees to ignore the truth. Insulated by privilege and protected by lackeys, they have refused to look. They have refused to see. Like some monkeys, they see no evil and hear no evil. It doesn’t matter that we can see them doing evil and hear them speaking evil.

In a childlike, though in no sense innocent, way they think they can hide their misdeeds and none will know. Like a baby playing peekaboo: I can’t see you, you must not be able to see me. Like a child holding his hands to his ears and screaming: I don’t hear you, therefore you must go away. These people live in a magical kingdom where only they matter and everybody else has no existence except as they serve as markers in some horrible game.

How do you deal with grown up children who, if they start losing, might use nukes to “earthquake” the game? We’ve written letters. We’ve marched and protested. Some have sat in a ditch on the side of a road and others have sat in jail cells. What more can we do? It seems that every attempt at discourse and every method of protest has come to naught because of the power of the modern imperial presidency and its modern police state apparatchiks.

The Gulf Vets March, New York, Washington, D.C., the pre-2003 world were all laudable efforts to stop war; yet none of these examples had the desired effect. They hardly had an impact. Not through a failure of the people who tried, but because the media and the state wouldn’t attend the multitude. Why? Because they were already living in an alternate universe, one where they made up the reality. The protesters didn’t exist in their world. Citizens don’t exist in their America. You and I don’t exist and don’t matter. Face it.

But, people, listen; facing it doesn’t mean failure. There are still things to do, actions to take. So, the powers that be didn’t listen to the hundreds of thousands, O.K. That’s what the Blackout of National Shame is about. The lords of war and captains of commerce can ignore you, they can ignore you in your millions; but they can’t ignore the night. Remember, these people live in an alternate universe, in a magical world. Up is down, good is bad, war is peace....and light is dark. They are magical, we’ll be counterintuitive.

We will turn off our lights in order that they may see. They will see how few in number they are. And, you will see how many other are like you. The Blackout of National Shame isn’t a magic bullet. Using counterintution doesn’t mean you’re stupid. We can’t afford magical thinking. But, it’s one more step in the right direction.

Please participate. Turn your lights off once a week on Wednesdays from 9 to 9:30 PM. You’ll save some money and decrease, in some negligible amount, the production of greenhouse gases. That will make Bush unhappy and must surely reward the effort. Turn off your lights (leaving the motion detector on, is probably O.K.). Ask everyone you know to turn their lights off. Take that one step in the right direction-one step; out the front door to look at the stars. Look at the stars and marvel at humanity and the universe. And maybe you’ll see a better future written there.

P.S. Don’t we all know doing the right thing can take a lot of money. Word of this Blackout will have to be passed from person to person to person. Isn’t that what grassroots is? Please help me. Think of this as a modified chain letter. Tell everyone you know and ask them to do the same. Thanks.

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